Insomnia
by TJ Robinson
Summary: Professor Oak-centric one-shot. Prompt for 2x5 Obsessions on LiveJournal. Title kind of gives it away here.


**A/N: **I wrote this story for a writing contest over at Pokémon Fan Universe Forums using one of my 2x5 Obsessions prompts as the basis for it. I seriously think that it's one of the best things that I've ever written, but I'd really like to get some other opinions on it as well. By the way, kudos to you if you can figure out what the noise was that Professor Oak was hearing.

**Prompt: **1-2: "insomnia" (2x5 Obsessions)

* * *

**Insomnia**

"Professor, I hate to sound rude, but I really don't think you should be doing this."

Tracey shuffled his dirty sneakers a bit on the linoleum floor of the lab and cast his gaze downward. His black hair, turquoise shirt, and pink headband and shorts caked in dirt, he appeared to be a guilty child being scolded for fooling in the mud. He didn't want to lecture his hero, but he knew that he still had to look out Professor Oak's health. After all, the man certainly wasn't as young as he used to be, and though he had heard somewhere that older people required less sleep to function normally, he didn't think going a whole night without sleep was healthy for anyone, regardless of age.

The Professor glanced away from his work at the computer and looked back at Tracey. Seeing him look so guilty for his concern actually made the professor feel guilty himself. Slowly, he stood up and approached his assistant, reaching out his hand to the boy's shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. He felt Tracey tense at his touch, and he quickly but quietly removed his hand from the area.

"I know that you are concerned, Tracey," the Professor began, "but I know what my limits are, and I'm fairly certain that I can handle going one night without any sleep. Besides, I wouldn't want you or any of the Pokémon to have to deal with the aftereffects of sleep deprivation; I would never want any of you to go through that."

At this, Tracey allowed his eyes to meet the Professor's. "Professor," he said hesitantly, "if you already know the effects of lack of sleep, why are you going through with this?"

The Professor smiled at his assistant, then answered, "Curiosity is a trait that every scientist needs to possess, Tracey, else that person would not do what a scientist is meant to do: wonder why the world around them works in its mysterious ways."

He let out a small sigh before continuing. "At the same time, I firmly believe that a scientist should find the answers to the questions he poses for himself through experience rather than hear-say or bookwork."

Tracey nodded, and the Professor went on. "As you see," he said somewhat bitterly while motioning back to the computer screen littered with open windows, "I think that I've gotten out of touch with that thought, and have been out of touch with it for the longest while. Look at my former student, Professor Elm. How often do you see the man venturing outside of his lab to do some field work?"

Tracey had only seen Professor Elm on a few occasions when Professor Oak had contacted him by video phone, but as the man always seemed to be nearby when the Professor phoned him, he could venture a guess that it wasn't very often, if ever at all. Not that this thought particularly mattered, though, as the Professor's question seemed to be rhetorical as he went on with his speech.

"On the other hand, you've got people like Professor Birch who do almost all of their experimenting through hands-on experience. I may not be as young as I used to be, but I still hold that empirical notion true. It's a mid-life crisis of sorts, I suppose."

Tracey had listened with rapt attention to the Professor, but he still didn't understand. "But, Professor, why this specific experiment? Why not just go out and observe the Pokémon or something, like Professor Birch does?"

The Professor scratched his chin and thought for a moment before he replied, "I also want to try something new, Tracey, something that I haven't ever done before. Believe it or not, I've never actually had to stay up all night in my career as a scientist."

Tracey couldn't help himself as he interrupted and blurted out, "Really?"

The sagacious researcher grinned and said, "You know what they say: 'Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.' And since I'd like to believe that I possess all three of those things in fair amounts, I think I can take this little risk. In fact, I think that's what I need more of in my life. Without risk, one's life becomes very dull."

The teen again nodded in agreement and glanced at the clock on the wall. "Anyway, Professor, I don't think you'll be in any state to help me feed the Pokémon tomorrow morning, not after staying up all night. It's almost nine o' clock, so I'm going to hit the hay so that I can do it. Have a good night."

"Good night, Tracey. And, please, don't lose sleep over this."

Tracey smiled slightly at the joke and replied, "I won't, Professor."

He watched as his assistant turned away and walked out the door of the lab area. Through the newly formed silence, he could hear the boy as he ascended up the stairs and turned left into his bedroom. The sound of his closing door echoed through the empty lab and carried a sense of finality to it. The Professor glanced around the lab and thought for a moment how nice it would be go upstairs and get ready for bed: to change into his soft, warm pajamas and slip under the cool sheets and drift off into that warm, fuzzy area that was the subconscious mind...

Yes, it was going to be a long night.

* * *

The sky outside was just as any other sky on a clear night. Little pinpricks of light dotted the dark-blue surface like little holes in the wall that lay boundary to the Earth and the heavens above, taunting those below with a glimpse of what lay beyond the drab green and brown hues of the ground. The full moon cast a translucent glow across the grounds, colored between a mix of silver and blue and casting deep valleys of shadows across the otherwise flat land.

Professor Oak lay flat on the cool, blue ground of the backyard of the lab and watched the night sky. He had always glorified nature; every hue it had painted across the land, sea, and sky left him amazed. Nature held obvious beauty, but at the same time, it had a subtle ferocity to it. It wasn't the same ferocity as shown in a storm, but it was an intensity and magnitude in the way it so boldly showed itself that left him very humbled.

He didn't mind, though. When looking at nature, he liked to feel small. It only made him think that he contributed to make something bigger, and it helped him realize that although humans had created many significant, remarkable things, they paled in comparison to the creation that lay before them since the beginning of their existence.

It had been a few hours now since Tracey had gone to bed and the experiment had begun. As he had determined while planning the experiment, he was not to use any sort of stimuli to help him stay awake: he could not drink caffeine, watch television, play video games, or even do research in the lab. His being awake had to be a completely natural action, and tomorrow, he would record the effects of his sleep deprivation.

The Professor stood up and let a fresh, chilly breeze whip at his body and gray hair. Something inside him told him that the first snow of the season would soon fall across the patches of brown and green grass that covered the thin soil of the lab grounds. Actually, he liked more to see the snow fall across the barren trees that had only recently shed the last of their brown, dead leaves that had one held the vibrant colors of red and yellow, and even before then, green.

Becoming aware of the fact that perhaps a thin, white lab coat on top of a short-sleeved red polo shirt and khakis wasn't the best thing to wear outside with winter approaching, he turned to go back inside the lighted lab. The breeze had since stopped, but a peculiar noise caught the Professor's ears. Looking back, he saw only the silhouette of the ranch shed and the reflected light of the moon on the pond near the edge of the dark woods.

In fact, there didn't even seem to be any Hoot-Hoot or Noctowl moving about in the woods; the grounds were completely still except for the Professor himself heading back towards the lab with a slightly quickened pace. He wasn't necessarily frightened, but the dark of the night had slipped into him, waking dormant insecurities that were rarely exposed in the bright light of day.

He opened the back door to the lab and slipped inside, quietly closing it behind him so as not to cause an echo, and he took off his brown loafers, placing them under the computer desk. The large room of the lab, with its cold, metal shelves stacked with Pokéballs and its pristine, gray linoleum floors and sparse decoration, made the Professor nervous for some reason, though he couldn't think of any former occasion when it had made him feel that way. As he figured would happen sooner or later with this experiment, he was getting tired.

He just needed something with which to occupy himself to keep his mind off his tiredness, his insecurities, and as he soon realized, his eminent boredom. He sat down in one of the chairs in front of the steel lab tables covered with lab instruments, placed his left arm on the hard, icy table, leaned forward a bit, and brought his right hand just above his temple. A few inches away from his arm sat a blue ballpoint pen and a yellow pad of lined paper. He brought the objects toward him, uncapped the pen and flipped to a blank sheet of paper, and tried to think of some poetry to write. But with just that moment's thought, he began to get a slight headache.

Irritated, he stood up and began pacing. He felt his socks slide across the smooth floor, and then he knew what he could do. Breaking into a slight run, he worked his way halfway across the lab room before he stopped himself and slid a few feet forward. A wicked grin broke out on his face and he began to do the same thing again and again: running halfway across the lab, stopping, sliding, then turning back and going in the other direction.

Run. Slip. Slide. Turn. Run. Slip. Slide. Turn. Run. Slip. Slide.

Normally, he hated repetition, but he was having so much fun, he didn't realize that during one of his slides, he started heading straight for one of the lab tables, and before he could stop himself, he had hit the back of the table and had gone over it. Instruments flew in the air and were strewn across the floor as they landed with small crashes, and the lab table itself tipped over on one of its longer edges with a clatter.

Meanwhile, Professor Oak found himself lying face-down on the floor. For the most part, he was unharmed, though he did feel a couple of bruises forming on his shins. He stood up, brushed himself off, and stormed angrily around the lab, picking up the fallen lab table as well as the fallen objects, which he hastily placed on the surface. He noticed that his temper had gotten shorter during this experiment. Glimpsing at the clock, he saw the hour hand lying fully on the three. It had been six hours now since the experiment had started, and he could feel the bags forming on his tan skin under his eyes.

No, he could never be an insomniac, he realized as he picked up a few stray objects off the ground and slowly placed them on the lab table. Staying up until this obscene hour of the morning with little to do, losing track of his thoughts and his temper... then again, if he were an insomniac, he would probably be used to this by now.

A quiet, almost inaudible noise broke the Professor away from his thoughts. It sounded almost like the beating of a drum, but its echo held a sinister quality that the Professor could only describe as grating, raspy. He hurriedly looked around himself, and as he did, the sound became louder, faster. Not wanting to find out what was causing the sound, he hurriedly walked out of the lab and headed into the living room.

The soft, turquoise rug felt nice on his feet compared to the hard, gray floor of the lab. He sat down on one of the brown, squishy sofas while the remote control for the television on the coffee table caught his eye. For a moment, he was tempted; he needed something to get his mind off what had just happened. But as he reached for the remote, he caught his hand and scolded himself. A scientist needed to sacrifice some things for his work, and this was one sacrifice that he thought was fairly simple to make.

But without the distraction, his mind kept replaying the noise he had heard earlier. He tried to put it out of his mind, but it only seemed to get louder as he applied more effort. Suddenly, he realized that the sound wasn't in his mind; whatever was making the noise was with him in the room.

He ran. He ran out of the living room until he reached the stairs in the dark hall. Then, he slowly crept up the stairs so as not to wake Tracey and headed to his bedroom. Quietly, he creaked open the door to the bedroom and was greeted by what appeared to be impenetrable darkness. Now he was frightened, not of the dark itself, but of the unknown things it held. All the while, the noise had followed him to where he stood, echoing behind him in the corridor only scarcely lit by moonlight.

He slammed his bedroom door shut and headed for Tracey's room, where he whipped the door open and headed to the right side of the teen's double bed. There, he whispered hoarsely, "Tracey?"

The Professor heard the white, moonlit sheets rustle as assistant awoke with a start and gaped into the darkness. The boy looked around for the source of the noise until his eyes met the Professor's silhouette. The Professor could see the reflection from the moonlight in Tracey's eyes fade a few times as his blinked. Then, slowly, he whispered back, "Professor Oak? It's—" He paused and glanced at the ghostly green glow of the clock on the bedside table. "It's four in the morning."

The man nodded and asked hesitantly, "Tracey, could I... could I sleep in your bed tonight?"

The Professor's eyes adjusted to the darkness in the room as he watched Tracey stare in disbelief at him. After an awkward moment passed, Tracey replied, "Well, um... what about your experiment and that whole experience thing?"

Professor Oak sighed and shook his head. "I had a few... problems, with it. It's all right; I'll just have to find another experiment to do."

"What's wrong, Professor? Why do you want to sleep here tonight?"

The Professor bowed his head and pleadingly replied, "Please, humor an old man, Tracey. I just don't want to be alone right now."

Tracey nodded and said, "Yeah, sure, Professor. You can sleep here tonight."

Relieved, the Professor responded, "Thank you, Tracey."

The old man, still fully dressed in his lab clothes, slid under the cool sheets and rested his head on the soft pillow. Tracey lay back down and turned away from the Professor. Within minutes, his breathing became light and shallow, and the Professor knew that he had fallen back asleep. Yet, despite his tiredness, the Professor didn't follow suit. He still heard the noise from earlier, but now it was slowly getting softer, less sinister... relaxed, almost.

Even if hadn't finished the experiment, the Professor had still learned a few things. For one, staying up late caused the body to revert back to an eerily primal, unsophisticated state where an autonomous will to survive governed all actions. At the same time, though, the mind became almost like that of a child's, with irrational fear abound and a desperate need to quell it by whatever means were available. So, from what he could tell, he had been human and beast, man and child, conscious and unconscious, and it had been too much for him to handle, even if it had only been for a matter of hours. He had been suspended between two worlds, almost as though he were a horrible zombie, a horrendous monster, a sickening hybrid.

But now, he thought as his felt his beating heart slow and his breath become softer and lighter while the noise still faded further, he would become whole again. He would sleep and return to one state of being, and when Tracey woke up in a few hours to go feed the Pokémon, he would blearily awake as well and see the beautiful blood-red and yellow hues of the sunrise – with one mind, one body, his own two eyes – if only for a moment before he returned to his peaceful slumber.

Yes, it had been a long night indeed.


End file.
